


make me young again (make me well)

by deerie



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Babies, Domestic, Families of Choice, Gen, Slice of Life, Unconventional Families
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:01:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21617275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deerie/pseuds/deerie
Summary: He reaches up on his socked toes and wriggles happily as Dyn scoops him up before he takes a tumble in his excitement.“Yeah, bud,” he agrees, “I’m home.”His son continues to babble in his ear as Dyn comes into the kitchen. He cocks an eyebrow at Cara and flatly says, “What is this?”
Relationships: The Mandalorian & Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 412





	make me young again (make me well)

Winta lives in the apartment directly below his.

This doesn’t explain why she’s sat on his front step, bouncing her leg and asking if his kid can come out and play.

“He’s not even two,” is what he finally settles on. “He can’t come out anywhere.”

“Can I come _in_ and play?” She asks, turning her big brown eyes on him as he unlocks the door.

“Where’s your mom?” He asks, carefully weighing his options.

On the one hand, Cara will jet out of there as soon as she hands off his kid to him. Winta is surprisingly good at keeping his kid occupied.

On the other hand, he just got off work and has plans of camping out on the couch.

“Downstairs,” Winta says seriously. “She’s making dinner. We’re having spaghetti tonight. It’s my favorite.”

He eyes the girl warily and then sighs and says, “Go ask your mom if it’s okay. You have to go back to your place before dinner.”

Winta grins at him and pops up in a flurry of movement. It’s entirely too much for him, honestly.

“Yes, yes, yes!” She says as she bops down the stairs, clattering around the bend and continuing to her apartment.

He watches her for a moment and then pushes his door open.

Cara watches him from the kitchen table. “Took you long enough, Dyn,” she says. “Thought you’d never come inside.”

He shrugs and crouches down in the doorway. “Hey, kid,” he says to the toddler making his way over.

The walking is new; the kid kind of _skipped_ the crawling phase, which was mildly alarming, and took to taking quavering steps three months after his first birthday.

“Dada,” he coos, “Dada, home!”

He reaches up on his socked toes and wriggles happily as Dyn scoops him up before he takes a tumble in his excitement.

“Yeah, bud,” he agrees, “I’m home.”

His son continues to babble in his ear as Dyn comes into the kitchen. He cocks an eyebrow at Cara and flatly says, “What is this?”

Cara slyly eyes the green knit cap covering his kid’s head. It’s got floppy ears. It’s ridiculous. “What,” she says, equally flat, “it’s cute.”

Dyn doesn’t disagree. He also doesn’t agree out loud, because if he gives Cara an inch, she’ll take a mile and grin about it as she inundates his home with excessive baby paraphernalia.

Cara stands up from the table, but instead of gathering her things to leave, she takes his kid from him.

At his disgruntled look, she says, “You’ve got a little something there,” pointing around his entire face. “Go take a shower. I’ll watch the squirt.”

“Winta’s coming back up,” he warns.

Cara shrugs. “We’ll be fine. We’ve been fine.”

Dyn frowns a little, but the siren song of an uninterrupted shower starts to lure him away.

“Seriously,” Cara says, “you’re gross. Get out of here, Christ.”

“Thank you,” he says, despite Cara’s entire _everything_.

She’s a good friend, he thinks.

When Dyn walks back down the hall fifteen minutes later, the gunk he’d collected from his job freshly washed off and in clean clothes, he finds Winta playing peekaboo with the baby in the living room.

Cara looks up from where she sits on the couch and grins at him. “Ah, there’s our cleanest man.”

He wrinkles his nose at her. “You good?” He asks Winta, but she barely tears herself away from the game to nod at him.

“When do you have to be home?”

She scrunches up her face behind her hands and glances at the clock. “5:30.”

He nods and then asks Cara, “Are you hungry?”

Cara shakes her head. “Nah, I got tacos after we went to the park. I think I’m going to go, if you’ve got it handled here?”

Dyn nods. He walks her to the door.

He’s grateful that he met her after he moved to Sorgan. She had put him in touch with the right people to get a job, bullied him into moving into the same apartment complex she lived in, and watched his kid for him because he had a strange paranoia about hiring babysitters.

“I’m going to the aquarium tomorrow,” Cara says as she steps outside. “I’m going to see the sharks. You both should come. Noon.”

Dyn inclines his head. He’ll think about it. Last time she’d convinced him to bring his kid to the aquarium, the squirt tried to take a header into the petting pool because he’d seen something particularly shiny beneath the water. It’s not an experience Dyn is keen to repeat.

A soggy baby is a cranky baby. A cranky baby is no one’s friend.

He watches as she crosses the parking lot back to her building and until she turns the corner and vanishes out of sight.

When he returns to the living room, Winta has his kid by the hands and leads him through a wobbly two-step dance. His kid laughs, delighted, as he stumbles over his own feet and coos up at her.

Winta looks over as he sits on the couch, intending to take a break before he has to cook their own dinner. “Did you have a good day?”

She always asks him, even if he knows the draw of his apartment is his son. She’s a good kid.

Dyn thinks about it a moment and then says, perfunctorily, “Yes.”

Winta hums under her breath and twirls the baby around slowly.

After a beat, Dyn asks after her day.

She twirls with the baby one last time and then picks him up and sits on the couch next to Dyn. She bounces his kid on her knee and Dyn watches them silently. Winta equivocates for a moment, trying to decide what to say, and then carefully chooses her words.

“It’s a sad day,” she decides. “This is the day my dad died, and my mom is always sad on this day. But we got to hang out, because she didn’t go into work, and that was nice.”

Dyn nods, because he doesn’t know exactly what to say but he empathizes with her deeply. Both of his parents are dead, and he knows the feeling that curls in his heart when he thinks of them.

“I have to go home now,” she says, and Dyn glances at the clock to see that it’s nearing 5:30.

“We’ll walk you down,” he tells her. “Put your shoes on.”

**Author's Note:**

> Listen, I'm not a Star War, but - BUT I can do a mean alternative universe, I think. Also, do you know how difficult it is to write a fic about a baby who doesn't actually have a name in canon? MMM it's real difficult. Anyway, I'm not a Star War but I wanted to get in on writing fic for The Mandalorian because it's gross how the show manages to hit every single one of my ticky-boxes: found families! Accidental baby acquisition! Over-identifying with the youth because you missed our on your childhood! Whoo!
> 
> Title is from The Mountain Goats' Jaipur. 
> 
> I'm tentatively marking this as complete, but let's be real here, it's probably not. I might write more, who knows? 
> 
> Catch me on Twitter sometimes at [@afuturetime](http://twitter.com/afuturetime)!


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